han the village could
manage, and carpenters, bricklayers, and decorators were necessarily
brought from other places. Still Joe Buttle and Sim Soames were allowed
to lead in all such things as lay within their capabilities. It was they
who made such a splendid job of the entrance gates and the lodges. It
was astonishing how much was done, and how the sense of life in the
air--the work of resulting prosperity, made men begin to tread with less
listless steps as they went to and from their labour. In the cottages
things were being done which made downcast women bestir themselves and
look less slatternly. Leaks mended here, windows there, the hopeless
copper in the tiny washhouse replaced by a new one, chimneys cured of
the habit of smoking, a clean, flowered paper put on a wall, a coat of
whitewash--they were small matters, but produced great effect.

Betty had begun to drop into the cottages, and make the acquaintance
of their owners. Her first visits, she observed, created great
consternation. Women looked frightened or sullen, children stared
and refused to speak, clinging to skirts and aprons. She found the
atmosphere clear after her second visit. The women began to talk, and
the children collected in groups and listened with cheerful grins.
She could pick up little Jane's kitten, or give a pat to small Thomas'
mongrel dog, in a manner which threw down barriers.

"Don't put out your pipe," she said to old Grandfather Doby, rising
totteringly respectful from his chimney-side chair. "You have only just
lighted it. You mustn't waste a whole pipeful of tobacco because I have
come in."

The old man, grown childish with age, tittered and shuffled and giggled.
Such a joke as the grand young lady was having with him. She saw he had
only just lighted his pipe. The gentry joked a bit sometimes. But he was
afraid of his grandson's wife, who was frowning and shaking her head.

Betty went to him, and put her hand on his arm.

"Sit down," she said, "and I will sit by you." And she sat down and
showed him that she had brought a package of tobacco with her, and
actually a wonder of a red and yellow jar to hold it, at the sight of
which unheard-of joys his rapture was so great that his trembling hands
could scarcely clasp his treasures.

"Tee-hee! Tee-hee-ee! Deary me! Thankee--thankee, my lady," he tittered,
and he gazed and blinked at her beauty through heavenly tears.

"Nearly a hundred years old, and he has lived on sixteen